I’ve been getting pretty regular questions about the state of the project, so I thought I’d start a new thread and ask for some feedback from those of you following the site (and asking me about it).

I’ve been preoccupied with the job thing, so I haven’t been working too much on Mumbles. With the most recent updates (svn is at a state where release 0.4 is coming shortly), it’s at the point where it does what I wanted it to do (scratched the itch as they say), so going forward, the project is really going to be driven by those of you that use it (and take the time to file a request). So please let me know what you want from the project in the comments for this post. More application plugins? Which applications would you like to see Mumbles support? New features? Better configuration?

As a starting point, here are some things I’ve been thinking about (and built the project with the idea of implementing in future releases):

* RSS notifications - I’ve had a request for this from another user and would like to see this myself - it’s probably the next thing I’ll work on. I’m a bit undecided about how to pursue this - should there be a script for something like Liferea that sends dbus notifications, should I write a simple RSS aggregator that sends dbus notifications? Any ideas/comments?

* Plugin-specific configuration - It seems like an option to only get a notification if your name is said in an IRC room makes sense. I also have the ability to handle clicks on the notification, so things like brining the application to focus or opening the website for the RSS feed make sense (the code in svn has some of this implemented). I believe Growl also keeps notifications open if you mouse over them - should Mumbles?

* libnotify output - I’ve been thinking it makes sense to make output plugins much like the application (input) plugins and have seen some comments from others who prefer libnotify alerts. So why not let you choose to use the Mumbles (composite enabled) notification or a libnotify notification - or any other kind of output for that matter (save to a database, SMS, email…?)

* Documentation/Tutorials - I’d like to drive contributions and assume writing some documentation or a tutorial about how to write a plugin would help on that front. Contributions about contribution would be good too. I’ve seen a few comments about how people are using Mumbles with other applications and feel the word could really get out with a few examples about how to use the mumbles-send script and/or the Mumbles dbus object (like Chris’ Thunderbird example)

* Themeable notifications/images - one could “theme” Mumbles by just swapping out the background image - do we want the ability to easily support themes (or use Gnome settings)? Should mumbles use buddy icons/album art/whatever else for the notification icons (see the point above about plugin-specific) configuration). Do we want to be able to choose font styles/sizes?

* deb package - I would really like to see this in order to make installation easier. I don’t have much experience with packaging files, so any help here would be greatly appreciated. What systems are you using Mumbles on? - do we want rpm, debs…?

That will hopefully get things going. Thanks to those of you following the project - the floor is open - I look forward to your ideas & comments.